A Year of Seeing: January 4, 2020: “The same other side”

The same other side

 

There is a peculiar pressure

in this weary world

to go out and up,

 

out to conquer and solve,

up to succeed and better–

a peculiar pressure to out and up.

 

Why, then, does my heart,

the still center of my soul,

feel pulled in and down?

 

Deeper into what makes me tick–and you–

that part of me that think it’s me

and that part of me that un-knows better.

 

Deeper into the soil to re-learn

what I would prefer to forget,

what I wish weren’t true.

 

Deeper into darkened rooms

with only a candle in hand

celebrating the subtle and silken shadows.

 

A whisper tells me that by going in and down

I will go through–be brought through–

and thus will kneel on the other side

 

having gone through myself and

teased out the knots, untied them,

the slack in the line giving room

 

for my face to lift enough and stretch

that my eyes can rest beyond me

and I can breathe deeply and rest.

 

The weight I felt burns away

like a fine fog in the ray of sunlight

that greets me each day and wakes my soul.

 

1/4/2020